


Devotion

by howevernot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aromantic Dean Winchester, Asexual Castiel (Supernatural), Fluff, Internalized Acephobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marriage, Queerplatonic Relationships, Relationship Negotiation, Timeline What Timeline, queerplatonic destiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29093721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot
Summary: “C’mon Cas, you can’t be serious. You want this? Shitty motel rooms and a bunker with no sunlight and my emotionally unavailable ass. You’re better than this.”“Dean, if I wanted to be with someone else, if I wanted to be somewhere else, I would have gone there already. I have nowhere else I want to be and no one else I want to be with.”ORIn which Dean Winchester and Castiel stumble into a queerplatonic relationship.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 24
Kudos: 90





	Devotion

**Author's Note:**

> Dean does have issues with internalized aphobia (specifically about being aromantic) in this fic. It's all self directed and it doesn't get fully talked out and resolved in this fic either, so if that's not something you want to read I suggest you stop here. ALSO this is unbeta'd and written in under 24 hours so pls forgive any mistakes.
> 
> Oh it should be noted that I haven't watched anything beyond season 9 and therefore don't actually know much about Eileen or Jack lol.
> 
> Endless thanks to my dear friend desperately-human, without whose encouragement this fic would not have been written. ily.

Dean risks himself unnecessarily on a hunt again. Dean throws himself in front of Cas to protect him from a hit that wouldn’t even have been that bad. His arm is bleeding, he wrenched his shoulder, and there wasn’t even time to stop and fix the wound in the rush to salt and burn the bones before the ghost could get them. In the aftermath, Cas drives them to the motel in stony silence as Dean presses gauze to the wound, the gauze that Cas insists they keep in the glovebox. He shuffles Dean inside and slams the door and none too kindly orders Dean to take off his shirt.

“What, no dinner first?” Dean jokes, though the effect was marred by the blood soaking his sleeve.

“Dean,” Cas grinds out, long suffering.

“Fine, fine.”

The shirt ends up on the floor, Cas kneels in front of Dean and in the shitty motel light he cleans the wound. He uses actual rubbing alcohol and not whiskey because Castiel, former angel of the lord, packs a first aid kit now, when they go on hunts. Dean’s glad for the sting of the alcohol and dull ache of the injury pulling him away from the tenderness with which Castiel bandages the wound. 

“You need to be more careful, Dean. I can no longer heal you.” Castiel has finished taping the gauze in place but he’s still holding onto Dean’s arm, looking up at him from the floor.

Cas has been human for over a year now. He hasn’t shown any interest in angeling up. He lives with Sam and Dean and Jack in the bunker. He eats breakfast with them. He goes on hunts. He and Dean and Jack take occasional road trips to do all the touristy shit Dean never did as a kid. The four of them visited the ocean. Cas has a garden. He can’t cook but he regularly provided Dean with sinfully sweet tomatoes.

“I almost made it to 30 without your intervention.”

“I straightened your fingers,” Cas touches his hand, “And your collarbone,” he reaches towards Dean’s chest, hesitates, pulls back. “I remade each bone in your face as if they had never been broken.”

He runs a thumb along Dean’s cheekbone, cupping his jaw and Dean closes his eyes.

“I can’t do that again. I can’t give you another chance like that,” he says, face crumpled.

“Cas,” Dean catches his wrist as he draws away then freezes, unsure what he even wants to say.

Cas sighs and seems smaller for it, kneeling on the floor in front of Dean, looking away.

“Dean,” Cas looks at him then, and Dean, as ever, is enraptured, “I love you. I cannot watch you break yourself into pieces because you still do not believe you deserve to live.”

Dean can’t breathe.

“You deserve so much more than this life. I would make it so you never hurt again, if I could. But I cannot, so please you must look out for yourself.” 

“You – you love me?” his voice comes out higher and tight.

Cas looks at him, wide eyed with an expression Dean can’t quite read.

“Yes, I love you. You know this, Dean,” Cas says gently.

Dean shakes his head.

“I didn’t, I didn’t – ” is all he can sputter out.

Cas lays a gentle hand on his arm.

“Dean Winchester, I love you,” his earnestness is painful.

Dean shakes his head.

“I can’t – I can’t give you what you want,” Dean admits quickly all in one breath.

Cas frowns, tilts his head in that way of his, “What do I want, Dean?”

Dean can’t look at him. Can’t disappoint Cas like this while looking at him.

“I love you, man. I do. But I don’t – I can’t. I don’t do the romance thing. The candles and roses and cutesy shit. It’s not me,” he’s ashamed by the confession.

“Dean, I don’t want any of that from you,” Cas says slowly.

Dean just snorts, throwing him an incredulous look.

“If I am perfectly capable of finding romance. I don’t want romance. I want you.” He says it with such conviction that Dean wants to believe him.

“C’mon Cas, you can’t be serious. You want this? Shitty motel rooms and a bunker with no sunlight and my emotionally unavailable ass. You’re better than this.”

“Dean, if I wanted something else, if I wanted to be somewhere else, I would have gone there already. I have nowhere else I want to be and no one else I want to be with.” 

“Cas, you’re not with me. We’re not – I can’t date you.” He can’t date anyone he doesn’t say.  
“I don’t want to date you.”

“Then why are you fucking telling me that you love me?” He is not about to cry he tells himself firmly.

“Because I do.”

“I can’t give you anything more,” Dean finally admits, because that’s it isn’t it? He has nothing else to offer Cas.

“I don’t want anything else from you. I am happy with this,” he makes a strange human gesture, an aborted shrug, as if to encompass the world.

“I’m too tired for this. Can we please – We have a six hour drive tomorrow to talk this over. Can we please sleep now?”

“Of course,” Cas answers and he only looks a little sad so Dean counts it as a win.

~~~~~~~

They don’t talk about it over breakfast. Instead, Cas talks about soil composition and growing seasons and pollinators and how he wants to make one of the rooms in the bunker into a greenhouse and Dean feels such a fondness filling his chest when Cas talks about the bees he watched, the way the bumblebees bumped into him drunkenly as he watered the oregano before they left. He looks at Cas as he rambles. He’s tan from the gardening. His face is getting wrinkled and careworn. Dean wants to see that face every day, for the rest of his life if he can. 

In the car, he blurts out, “I want you to stay.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Cas answers like it’s a question.

Dean blows out a breath, trying to gather his thoughts.

“What you said last night. I was thinking about if I do want things from you, knowing how we both feel now. I want you to stop leaving,” he starts the car, easier to talk when he doesn’t have to look at Cas’s piercing eyes. “You have a home with us. I’m not going to ask you to leave but I want you to stay, if you want to.”

Cas is quiet and the greasy breakfast sits heavy in Dean’s stomach as he pulls up to the intersection. He casts a glance at Cas as they wait for the light. Cas’s eyes are wide.

“Thank you, Dean. I would be honored to stay with you.” 

“You already live with us, idiot.” Dean reminds him, feeling stupid. Cas has been living with them for a year. They take turns driving Jack to school. But the crawling suspicion that Cas is going to up and disappear one day has never quite left Dean.

“Yes, but you’ve never… You’ve never invited me. You never asked me to stay,” there’s quiet awe in his voice and Dean feels guilt drop into his stomach that Cas didn’t know he was wanted.

“I always want you to stay,” he admits quietly.

“Dean, I know you said you don’t want to date but I do need you to know that you are the most important person in my life. What I feel for you is no what I feel for Sam or Jack or what I felt for any of my siblings. I do need anything to change between us, but I need you to know, I am devoted to you.”

Dean is silent for a long time.

“Cas, I meant what I said last night. I love you but I don’t date. I tried it but it never. It never worked right, I don’t work right. But you are my best friend,” he sighs, struggling to find the words. “You know, I don’t even know if you’re my best friend. Charlie was my best friend but I didn’t want to see her every day like you. I just, there is no one else. The way I feel about you,”

“I think I understand, Dean.”

Dean turns up the music after that, face burning, unable to tolerate any more emotional intensity.

They’ve just crossed the state line into Ohio when Dean says, “I can’t date but I wouldn’t mind if we were committed.”

“Committed.” Cas rolls the word over his tongue. “What do you mean?”

“You’re it for me Cas. I mean it. There’s never gonna be anyone else.”

“So you want a committed friendship?” Cas asks and Dean cringes. Sounds fucking stupid out loud. He soldiers through.

“Yeah.”

“I would like that, I think.”

A few miles later, on the highway, Cas says, “Dean, I must confess, if you are hoping to have sex – with me – I’ve found I don’t particularly like it. I’m sorry to disappoint.”

Dean has thought about it, he can admit that to himself at least. But it’s not something he craves, not something he needs to be happy with Cas. 

“Cas, it’s fine. I don’t. I wouldn’t ask that of you. I don’t need it really, not with you.”

“Oh, well that’s good then.”

In the following lull of conversation, Dean sees him fidgeting. Cas opens his mouth a few times, then close it again. Dean tries to wait him out. 

A few miles later, he finally asks, “Was there something else you wanted to tell me?” 

“I would not mind if we spent more time together, physically,” Cas admits after a pause.

“We spend tons of time together.”

Cas makes a frustrated little noise.

“No, I mean touching. I would not mind if we touched more.”

“Like what? Thought you didn’t want to fuck.”

“Dean. There are many ways to touch that don’t involve sex. You have taught me that.”

Dean pauses to think about it, about all the times he’s touched Cas, reached for him, comforted him. 

“Uh, yeah sure. We can do that. Get up close and personal with the angel.”

“I am no longer an angel, Dean. And we don’t have to do it if it makes you uncomfortable,” he sounded brittle and little bitchy.

“No, dude, it’s fine. I’d like that too, I guess.”

“Are you going to be this prickly about it when I do actually try to touch you?” 

“Fuck off. I’m not prickly.”

He casts a quick glance over at Cas who is sending him a disbelieving stare.

“Fine. I’ll try to be less prickly.”

~~~~~~~

Dean finds it surprisingly easy to touch Castiel more. Without the weight of romance or sex behind touch it becomes a simple thing to cross into Cas’s personal space. He brushes a hand over Cas’s shoulder as he passes by and knocks their knees together at dinner. He hugs Cas more, puts an arm around his shoulder because he can. When he and Cas and Jack pile onto the couch to watch a movie Dean isn’t careful to keep himself away from Cas anymore. 

He finds himself putting on an episode of Next Generation and holding up his arm one night, waiting for Cas. Cas passes him the popcorn and fits himself into the space of Dean’s arm. Dean draws him in by the waist and starts explaining Star Trek lore through mouthfuls of popcorn and it really doesn’t feel any different than before.

It goes on like that. Sometimes on cold nights or on hunts with just the two of them they share a bed. He wakes up with Cas plastered against his back a couple of times. Sometimes they’re just in bed together, Cas’s hand clenched in his shirt, or their backs pressed together in the mornings. Cas wakes him up after a nightmare once and wordlessly shuffles into Dean’s arms, shuddering faintly.

Sam doesn’t comment, but Dean can feel him watching. Jack doesn’t comment either but he seems to take their increased intimacy as an invitation to touch more too. When Eileen comes to visit it is somehow Jack who gives her the first hug, much to her delight and Sam’s mild dismay. 

And Dean, he feels good. Settled. There’s no big disasters coming their way and for once, Cas isn’t itching to run out the door. It’s good.

~~~~~~~

It’s Dean who asks to kiss him in the end. Sam’s off on a solo hunt and Cas spent the whole day researching greenhouses and sunlamps and moisture levels and a hundred other things that he told Dean and Jack about over dinner and Dean feels warm and fond and wants to kiss him. After dinner, Jack rushes off to his room with promises to wash the dishes after he finishes his game and leaves Dean and Cas with an easy silence.

“Cas, can I kiss you?” he asks, in the kitchen as they stack dishes in the sink. 

Cas’s eyes immediately drop to Dean’s lips.

“I thought you didn’t want anything else,” Cas says slowly.

“I changed my mind. That ok? You not like kissing either?”

“I am amenable to kissing, if not particularly experienced.”

Dean grins, “I’ll go easy on you.”

He pulls Cas in and lays a chaste kiss on his lips, longer than a peck but more restrained than Dean is used to.

He pulls back. “That ok?”

Cas nods, looking thoughtful.

“I would like more.”

Dean smiles even brighter and pulls Cas close, enjoying the heat of the other man’s body against his.

“Ok, we can do that. Let me know if you get uncomfortable though and we’ll stop.”

Cas nods.

Dean leans in again to kiss him. They go slow and lazy, without much heat but with a kind of clumsy passion and god Dean hasn’t kissed anyone like this since he was 17 and high and trying to get into Cindy Longenecker’s pants. He finds he likes it. He likes how they’re unhurried and there’s no clear goal other than enjoying each other.

~~~~~~~

So, they add lazy make out sessions to the repertoire. It doesn’t happen often but sometimes Cas will pull him close and kiss him breathless and Dean didn’t know he could be kissed breathless without the promise of sex to follow but here he is, breathless and kissing Cas on the couch. 

Through it all, Dean hasn’t given much thought to Sam. He tries to avoid alerting his brother to the bedsharing and they keep the PDA down to non-kissing in front of others and Sam never says anything. And Jack, well. Jack has Cas’s lack of understanding of human social rules and he’s so young. Dean doesn’t think he needs to explain to Jack yet. 

It’s not really their business anyway, to know that Dean and Cas have started kissing in their free time. 

~~~~~~~

Dean doesn’t give a whole lot of thought to what others will even think of their relationship until one hunt where some witch called their love a meaningless little unconsummated trifle. It’s stupid. It’s stupid to feel bad about the words of a mass murdering witch and yet, back at the motel, while Cas is in the shower, Dean works himself into a panic. They don’t fuck, Dean doesn’t take Cas on dates, no one’s ever seen them kiss, they’re the only people in the world who know how devoted they are to each other and suddenly that doesn’t feel like enough. Sure he loves Cas but not in any way he can explain. He wants Cas to be with him every day but not – but not what. Not really, not fully, not the way the movies tell him he should want Cas.

Cas finds him like that, doubled over, sitting on the floor, with a shot of whiskey already in him.

“Dean, Dean?” urgent, edging on frantic. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

Dean just shakes his head.

“You need to breathe.” Dean would laugh at that if he could.

In the absence of anything else to do, Cas sits on the floor beside Dean, holding his hand. He puts some music on his phone, low and almost entirely out of Dean’s range of hearing and just sits with him until Dean can breathe again.

“Turn it up,” Dean says when he’s feeling a little more inside his body.

“Hm?” 

“The music, can’t hear it. Turn it up.” So Cas does and it’s terrible 80s pop and Dean would like to know where the fuck Cas got a taste for 80s pop music anyway.

“Dean, what’s wrong?” Cas asks again after a few minutes of silence.

“That witch. She was right about us, wasn’t she?” he says exhaustion is pulling at him.

“About what?” 

“Us, our relationship. It’s nothing. We’re just some friends, we’re not – ” Dean gestures to them both, sitting on the motel carpet, “We’re nothing.”

Cas is quiet a long time.

“Dean, everything I have done in the past few years has been for you, misguided and stupid as much of it was, it was for you. For love of you. Do no call that nothing.”

Dean wants to argue. Wants to tell Cas he’s not worth it; he’s just a worthless speck of a human to be ground down under the heel of the universe. He doesn’t deserve that kind of devotion. 

But Cas does. Cas, who is good and kind and sometimes arrogant to the point of self destruction and often wrong, deserves devotion. Cas, who feels so intensely guilty for his misdeeds, who wants to do better by the world. Cas, who Dean loves, even if it’s not the way the movies tell him he should love. 

“Let’s get married,” he blurts out.

Cas bumps their shoulders together.

“How?” Cas asks.

“What do you mean how? It’s not that hard.”

“Dean, I’ve never been to a wedding.”

“You must have watched thousands of weddings, dude.”

“Yes. I have seen courthouse weddings and broomstick weddings and weddings where glasses are smashed and weddings where the bride is hidden from view until the last moment and weddings between men. I’m not sure I understand what a wedding is.”

“Well, in America it’s a tax break.”

Cas frowns at him.

“I don’t think you’ve ever filed taxes in your life, Dean.”

“Probably not,” he agrees.

“Look, I want to get married. Let’s go to the courthouse tomorrow. You have a fake driver’s license, right? And I do too.”

“Would it help you feel better about our relationship?” Cas asks after a long moment.

“Yes,” and it’s true, somehow, even with the fake IDs and the grimacing judge and the kiss that’s observed by total strangers in some no-name town in fucking Nebraska. Dean feels better once they’ve signed their fake names and listed their fake address and shared a real kiss. It’s only once they’re in the car on the way home that Dean realizes they might need to tell Sam and Jack about this. 

~~~~~~~

See the thing is, Dean doesn’t know how to explain himself. He’s in love with Cas, except not really except they exchanged wedding vows and promises of forever except Dean did go out and sleep with a hot bartender last week and Cas knows about that and he doesn’t mind because Cas doesn’t want to fuck Dean and Dean doesn’t want to fuck Cas but he does want to hold him pretty much every night as they fall asleep. How does he explain that to his brother? To Jack?

So it totally blindsides him when Sam corners in him in the war room and hisses, “Dean, you need to talk to Cas.”

“About what?” he demands, adrenalin already pumping.

“Dude, you think I can’t see it? You love him.”

“What? Yeah, of course I do. What’s wrong with Cas?” 

“Nothing’s wrong with Cas but dude, you need to tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Dean demands perplexed.

“That you love him!”

“What? Sam, he already knows that.”

“Fine then you need to tell him you really love him.”

“Sam, he knows how much I love him. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“C’mon Dean, you can’t be that repressed. I see the way the two of you touch each other! The way you look at each other! I swear they can hear the two of you pining three states over.”  
“What are you talking about no one is pining.”

“Dean!”

“Actually, Sam, I am quite happy with my relationship with Dean,” Cas says from the mezzanine and Dean just about has a heart attack from the shock. 

“Cas, can you please try to make some noise,” Dean calls up, frustrated.

“Yes, Dean. I will make sure to get in the habit of being nosier. I am sure it will serve me well on our next hunt.” 

Dean rolls his eyes towards the ceiling, silently praying for the strength to have this argument for the 8th time this week.

“See! This is what I’m talking about! The two of you bicker like you’re married!” Sam burst out and Dean can see what’s about to happen, just from Cas’s expression as he descends the stairs.  
“Well, we are married, Sam, though I fail to see how that relates to bickering.”

Sam’s eyes bulge and he swivels towards Dean whose face is heating under Sam’s scrutiny.

“You’re kidding. Dean, what the fuck? He’s kidding right.”

“Uh, no, Sammy. Cas and I got married.”

Sam gapes at him for a minute. Cas leaves the room only to return a moment later with an orange. He sits at the table and sets his piercing gaze on Sam.

“When the fuck were you going to tell me?” Sam screeches.

“Look, I was just trying to think of a way to explain – “

“What’s there to explain? You’re fucking married! Holy shit. What the fuck. Does anyone know?” he demands and Dean winces because no he hasn’t told anyone, not Jack, not Donna and Jody and the girls. No one.

“Oh man, Jody’s gonna kill you dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“What the fuck, Dean. Seriously,” Sam looks at a loss.

“Look I don’t know how to explain it ok!” Dean bursts out.

“Explain what? What is there to possibly explain Dean.”

“What is Dean explaining?” a new voice calls from the mezzanine and there’s Jack, back from visiting Claire with no warning at all, stepping right into the mess of Dean’s life.

“Jack,” Cas stands, handing the peeled half eaten orange to Dean, who immediately takes a slice for himself. The two hug at the bottom of the stairs, then Jack comes over to hug Dean, then Sam. Dean hands him an orange slice.

“What’s going on?”

“Dean was just explaining to Sam that we go married,” Cas says and Dean throws him a withering look.

“Oh yeah! You texted me about it.” Jack’s smile is brilliant.

“You told Jack but not me?” Sam’s voice is rising in volume.

“Sam. Look, we love each other,”

“Yeah, Dean, that’s how marriages work.”

“Will you shut the fuck up and let me finish? Cas and I love each other but we’re not really conventional. We don’t really do the whole romance thing. We just, we want to spend the rest of our lives together, as friends.”

Sam’s eyes narrow.

“Dean, I swear to god,” he starts.

“Is this a queerplatonic thing?” Jack asks.

Dean is ready to spit at Jack for throwing that word at him but Cas stops him with a quiet, “Dean.” 

Dean takes a moment to gulp back the knee jerk aggression.

“What’s that Jack? Queerplatonic?” Cas asks.

“I dunno. Claire mentioned it to me.”

Sam’s already got his phone out. 

“Uh, according to this article it’s like a relationship that’s more intense than a friendship but lacks certain romantic or sexual norms? Common with people who are aromantic or asexual.”

“What’s that?” Jack asks, now seated beside Cas at the table. Dean wanders over to them, putting a hand on Cas’s shoulder. 

“Uh I don’t know. Hang on,” Sam scrolls for a minute, “Ok so aromantic is people who don’t feel romantic attraction and asexual people are people who don’t feel sexual desire? I don’t know man, the articles are really long. Here.”

He hands the phone over the table and Cas and Jack lean over it. Dean sits on the other side of Jack but doesn’t bother reading the tiny phone screen. He’ll look it up later.

Sam sits across from them. He’s still staring at Dean.

“Queerplatonic does sound like us, Dean,” Cas says quietly after a moment of reading.

“Yeah?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” it’s Jack who answers, “It says that people in queerplatonic relationships can do some stuff from romantic relationships too but that they don’t really feel romantic feelings for each other.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Dean chokes out, for the first time realizing that perhaps his relationship with Cas isn’t some broken little thing.

They lapse into silence again as Jack and Cas continue reading. 

“I would categorize myself as asexual, I think,” Cas says after a few minutes of silence.

“That’s great Cas,” Sam says and Dean snorts at his awkward little brother.

“That makes a lotta sense,” he offers.

“Do you think you might be – ” Sam starts.

“Shut up, Sammy.”

Sam gives him a bitchy look but stays mercifully quiet. 

“You know you have to get married again?” Sam asks into the silence.

“I thought only divorced people could get married again,” Cas says looking up from the phone. Sam chokes.

“No, he means he wants to do a wedding with the family, Cas,” Dean clarifies.

“I would like that,” Jack pipes up.

“I bet you would, kiddo.” Dean says, trying to press down a rising sense of dread.

A wedding with the family means flowers and dances and declarations of enteral love and it makes Dean’s skin crawl. Cas looks over at him.

“Maybe something small. Something quiet,” Cas suggests. Sam deflates but Dean is grateful.

“We’ll save the big celebration for you an Eileen,” Dean teases and Sam blushes.

“You and Eileen are getting married too? When?” Jack asks, earnest and eager.

“I uh – not yet. I haven’t even asked her to move in yet.”

“Better get on that, Sammy.”

~~~~~~~

That night Dean sleeps with his hand in the middle of Cas’s back, feeling his chest expanding under Dean’s hand. Here, he thinks. He wants to be here

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! Comments and kudos fuel my writing! Please keep your comments respectful though!


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